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CARLOS - Are there any evil spirits in the spirt world tempting souls to do evil. When I say evil spirits I mean spirits that never received a body on Earth, spirits that are followers of satan and were part of the one third of host of heaven that were cast out with Lucifer.
JOEL - All the third part of the host of spirits were cast down to earth with Lucifer and are responsible for all the tempting of mankind to do evil.
Here are some relevant scriptures:
"And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.
And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is case down, which accused them before our God day and night." (Rev. 12:7-10)
"And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born." (Rev. 12: 4)
We teach that the spirits in prison who never had the opportunity to hear and accept the gospel in this life will receive that chance there and be able to obtain exaltation (1 Pet. 3:18-20, 4:6, D&C 138:27-32).
One might ask however, how are those spirits in Spirit prison able to prove themselves worthy of exaltation if they are not subjected to the same temptations from Satan and his angels like we are in this life?
First of all we know from the scriptures that the natural man is an enemy to God:
"For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord" (Mosiah 3:19)
Therefore we are all quite capable of committing sin or being sinful without the help of Satan and his angels.
We also learn the following:
"And now, as I said unto you before, as ye have had so many witnesses, therefore, I beseech of you that ye do not procrastinate the day of your repentance until the end; for after this day of life, which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the night of darkness wherein there can be no labor performed.
Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful crisis, that I will repent, that I will return to my God. Nay, ye cannot say this; for that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world." (Alma 34: 33-34)
So even though when we die and realize that there is indeed a heaven and hell, that knowledge is not going to make it any easier for us to change who we are. We will still be subject to the natural man within us and will have to repent for our sins and change our nature to prepare us for eternal life.
Elder Melvin J. Ballard said,
"Do not let any of us imagine that we can go down to the grave not having overcome the corruptions of the flesh and then lose in the grave all our sins and evil tendencies. They will be with us. They will be with the spirit when separated from the body.So, men won't know any more when they are dead than when they are living, only they will have passed through the change called death. They will not understand the truths of the gospel only by the same process as they understand and comprehend them here. . . . When you die and go to the spirit world, you will labor for years, trying to convert individuals who will be taking their own course. Some of them will repent; some of them will listen. Another group will be rebellious, following their own will and notion, and that group will get smaller and smaller until every knee shall humbly bow and every tongue confess." (Sermons and Missionary Services of Melvin J. Ballard, 240, 245)
Elder Neal A. Maxwell made it clear that we continue to walk by faith in the postmortal spirit world:
"We do not now know precisely how God handles things in the spirit world so that life there is an extension of walking by faith. Death does not suddenly bestow upon the disbeliever full awareness of all reality, thereby obviating the need for any faith. Instead, what follows death is a continuum of the basic structure in mortality—until the Judgment Day, when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ (see Romans 14:11; Philippians 2:10; D&C 76:110). Until then, we 'walk by faith, not by sight' (2 Corinthians 5:7).
How will God ensure this condition in the spirit world? We do not know. Yet He has certainly so handled the second estate in relation to the first estate, hasn't He? The memories of the first estate are not accessible in the second estate. The spirit world will be so arranged that there will be no legitimate complaints later over the justice and mercy of God (see Mosiah 27:31; Alma 12:15).
The gospel, when preached in the spirit world, will bring the same responses as here: 'some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not' (Acts 28:24)."(Maxwell, That Ye May Believe, 94)
So even if Satan and his angels were not tempting us, we would still have to overcome our sinful nature and repent of our sins either in this life or the next.
Secondly, we have also been taught that the Spirit world somehow exists on this earth with us, perhaps in another dimension.
President Brigham Young once said:
"When you lay down this tabernacle, where are you going? Into the spiritual world…Where is the spirit world? It is right here. Do the good and evil spirits go together? Yes they do…. Do they go beyond the boundaries of the organized earth? No, they do not…. Can you see it with your natural eyes? No. Can you see spirits in this room? No. Suppose the Lord should touch your eyes that you might see, could you then see the spirits? Yes, as plainly as you now see bodies" [Discourses of Brigham Young, ed. John A. Widtsoe, pp. 376-81. Salt Lake City, 1946.].
Elder Parley P. Pratt said of the Spirit World:
"As to its location, it is here on the very planet where we were born; or, in other words, the earth and other planets of a like sphere, have their inward or spiritual spheres, as well as their outward, or temporal. The one is peopled by temporal tabernacles, and the other by spirits. A veil is drawn between the one sphere and the other, whereby all the objects in the spiritual sphere are rendered invisible to those in the temporal."(JD 3:368-69; KT, 132-33).
And Elder Harold B. Lee. said:
"Where is the spirit world? Is it away up in the heavens? That isn't what the scriptures and our brethren explain. They have told us the spirit world is right here round about us, and the only spirits who can live here are those who are assigned to fill their missions here on earth. This is the spirit world. And if our eyes could be opened we could see those who have departed from us—a father, mother, brother, a sister, a child." (Teachings of Harold B. Lee, 58; see also Discourses of Brigham Young, 376–77; Pratt, Key to the Science of Theology, 126)
And Brigham Young makes the connection between those in the spirit world and Satan and his evil spirits when he said,
"Those who have died without the Gospel are continually afflicted by those evil spirits, who say to them—'Do not go to hear that man Joseph Smith preach, or David Patten, or any of their associates, for they are deceivers.'" (Young, Journal of Discourses, 3:731)
Therefore, knowing that Satan and his spirits were cast down to this earth and that the spirit world is here on earth with us, we must conclude that Satan and his evil spirits must have access to both the physical world to tempt the living and the spirit world to tempt the dead, as suggested by Brigham Young. They function in their role as tempters to those trying to prove themselves worthy in both realms.
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